Introduction:

In today’s data-driven world, businesses heavily rely on data analytics and visualization tools to gain actionable insights. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful platform for creating interactive reports and dashboards. While Flask provides a robust framework for building web applications. Combining the capabilities of Power BI embedding with Flask, we can create a dynamic and user-friendly data visualization solution.

Objective:

The goal of this project is to develop a Flask web application integrated with Microsoft Power BI embedding features. This integration allows users to seamlessly embed Power BI reports within the web app, providing a rich and interactive experience for data analysis and decision-making.

Technologies Used:

• Python – Backend logic and Flask framework
• Flask – Web framework for routing and handling HTTP requests
• Microsoft Power BI – Embedding reports and dashboards
• Microsoft Azure
  Active Directory: User authentication and access control
  App Registrations: Registering Azure AD application for PowerBI
  authentication
• HTML/CSS: Frontend presentation and styling
• JavaScript (jQuery): Client-side interactions and API requests

 

Key Features:

Power BI Integration:
We can seamlessly embed Power BI reports and dashboards within the Flask web application, allowing users to visualize and interact with data directly from the app’s interface. This integration enhances data-driven decision-making by providing real-time insights.

App Registrations and Azure AD Integration:
Register the Flask application as an Azure AD application to obtain authentication tokens securely. This integration facilitates seamless authentication and authorization processes, improving user experience and security.

Dynamic Data Binding:
Enable dynamic data binding between Power BI reports and datasets, allowing for real-time updates and interactive data exploration. Users can easily switch datasets within the embedded reports, enhancing data analysis capabilities.

Responsive Design:
We can Implement custom and responsive design for the web application based on our needs, ensuring compatibility across various devices and screen sizes.

 

Use Cases:

1. Business Analytics Dashboard:
   Scenario:  A company’s sales team needs to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, customer acquisition rates, and product sales trends.
   Solution: The Flask app integrated with Power BI embedding allows sales executives to access a dynamic dashboard containing Power BI reports. They can analyze sales data, monitor KPIs, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to optimize sales strategies.
2. Financial Reporting Portal:
   Scenario:  The finance department of an organization requires a centralized platform toanalyze financial statements, cash flow reports, and budget allocations.
   Solution: The Flask app with Power BI integration provides a secure financial reporting portal. Finance professionals can view embedded Power BI reports, perform financial
   analysis, track expenses, and gain insights into budget utilization for better financial
   management.
3. Marketing Campaign Insights:
   Scenario: A marketing team wants to assess the performance of marketing campaigns, measure customer engagement, and evaluate return on investment (ROI).
   Solution: Using the Flask app with embedded Power BI reports, marketers can access a comprehensive dashboard with campaign analytics. They can track metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, social media engagement, and campaign ROI to optimize marketing strategies and improve campaign effectiveness.
4. Project Management Dashboard:
   Scenario: Project managers require a centralized dashboard to track project timelines, monitor task progress, allocate resources efficiently, and analyze project performance.
   Solution: The Flask application with embedded Power BI reports serves as a projectmanagement dashboard. Project managers can access real-time project data, visualizeproject milestones, track resource utilization, identify bottlenecks, and make data-drivendecisions to ensure project success and meet project deadlines.
5. Healthcare Data Visualization:
   Scenario: A healthcare organization needs a data visualization platform to analyze patient outcomes, medical records, and hospital performance metrics.
   Solution: The Flask app integrated with Power BI embedding enables healthcare professionals to visualize healthcare data effectively. They can view embedded Power BI reports containing patient data, treatment outcomes, resource utilization, and performance indicators to make informed decisions, improve patient care, and optimize hospital
   operations.

Tutorial – Setting Up Flask with Power BI Embedding and Azure Integration

Step 1: Prerequisites

• Python installed on your machine
• Microsoft Azure account – for Azure Active Directory and App Registrations
• Power BI Pro account with access to workspaces, reports and datasets

 

Step 2: Azure Active Directory Setup

• Log in to your Microsoft Azure portal.
• Get into “App Registration” and create a new App with below requirements,

• In the Overview page, note down client Id and tenant Id

• Get into the “Certificates and Secret” tab, create a new secret and capture the value.
  Note: Secret value will be shown only once when it’s created, make a note of it.

• Get into “API Permissions” tab and allow all the below required PowerBI API access
  types for your application.

• Now get back to home, search for “Groups”, get into “Groups” and create a new
  group, adding your application as a member.

With this, the Azure Active Directory is ready.

 

Step 3: PowerBI Setup

• Create a PowerBI report and publish it to your PowerBI Service workspace.
• Login to your PowerBI service, ge tinto your report which you have just published,
  and capture workspace id and report id from the URL as shown below,

• In the above image, “d957d1de-4abb-406f-a183-49fbcafa4fed” is my workspace id, and “768bd421-94d3-457c-9eb4-10263d2404af” is my report id.
• Get back to your workspace page -> click the three dot option -> Select “Manage Access” -> “Add People or Groups” -> Search and find your Azure group and set it as member/admin, as shown in the below picture,

With this, our PowerBI setup is complete and we can move on to the code section.

Step 4: Code

• Clone the repository from this link (“https://github.com/ranjith1361/report_embedding”) and open this in your preferred IDE.
• Optionally, you can create and activate a virtual environment.
• Once the Virtual environment is activated, install required packages from
  “requirements.txt” file using the below command, pip install -r requirements.txt

• Open “config.py” file from the root directory and fill up the below informations which we have already captured from above instruction, along with your PowerBI credentials where your report is published.

• Optionally, you can open the “index.html” file from templates folder and “index.css” file from ./static/css folder to modify the “report-container” section’s css as per your need.
• Run the application using the below command, flask run
  

• By default, flask will run on your local host: “http://127.0.0.1:5000”
• Open this URL in your browser to view your embedded Power BI report with the CSS
  modification you have made.
• Once you have successfully developed this test application to embed your PowerBI report in flask. You can start developing your own application based on this approach.

Conclusion:

By integrating Flask with Microsoft Power BI embedding capabilities and Microsoft Azure services such as Azure Active Directory and App Registrations, this project empowers organizations to harness the power of data visualization for informed decision-making and strategic planning. The combination of these technologies offers a secure, scalable, and customizable solution for data-driven businesses seeking to enhance their data analytics capabilities